


Of Quills and Quiet Plans

by Silberias



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, because i'm shipper trash, in which Sansa uses all of her pretty skills, well perhaps not all of them this fic does not in fact include sewing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 04:36:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4815317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silberias/pseuds/Silberias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ned learns a fundamental thing from his friend Robert's rebellion and later coronation--there is a weakness in men when offered power, and after Jon Arryn dies in the Capitol he knows that it is no place for Starks. Robert's letter hints at naming Ned as Hand, and at wedding their families together through Robert's sons and Ned's daughters--and for all that, Ned cannot shake this feeling of dread. </p><p>So he acts and it changes everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Quills and Quiet Plans

**Author's Note:**

> Who do I blame for this? MissMallora? Tommy? Alijah? TheSweetestThing? Ally'all?
> 
> I'm going to settle for Ally'all. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Sansa was terrified to do as her Lord Father asked. She didn't want to--it was dishonorable, and she didn't want to marry Prince Oberyn Nymeros Martell. She didn't even want to force Arya into a betrothal to Lord Edric Dayne. She wanted to follow her dreams, to be a lady like those of the songs and stories she loved so dearly. In her very private thoughts she had celebrated the rumors that King Robert intended to have her wed Prince Joffrey--she would be a princess, and then a queen!

Instead though her father asked her to draw the Martell sigil for Mikken to make a cast of for the one in their book of Noble Houses had one that was too small for him to properly make out. Her lord father also asked that she help Gage's sister dye some wax the proper color of Dornish Orange, and to approve or disapprove the color of red they already had on hand. Because Father and Mother asked her to, though, she did as she was told. She even used her best script and wrote the letter they dictated to her. It was bizarre, proposing marriage to herself--to a man far older than she'd ever thought to wed--and knowing that the Sunspear raven would be hidden by Maester Luwin during the King's visit by being placed on a 'Winterfell bird' perch rather than its own.

The attention to detail that both her parents paid to the deception made Sansa wonder what else they might have colluded on. Was Robb perhaps the bastard son of Brandon Stark? Was Jon the son of Robert Baratheon, taken North as some token of affectionate duty between Father and King Robert? Was Mother really Catelyn Tully or did that woman serve as Lady of the Vale?

In the end, the King arrived full of blustery hope that she and her sister would wed his sons--and the _boom_ of the door to Father's solar was heard throughout the castle as King Robert stormed out of it. It was the words he'd been heard muttering, things of ordering Father to break the 'betrothals' or face the Crown's wrath, that had Sansa realizing why her parents had kept the Sunspear bird rather than sending it to Dorne to further their lies.

They needed the Sunspear bird to warn the Martells of how the king's will fell--and to plead their case to a pair of families that ought to lose no sleep over Stark suffering.

Arya, who was kept in the dark even now, raged at being sent to Dorne--though when Mother had sharply asked if Arya would like a warrior or a dormouse for a husband her sister had gone petulantly quiet. Sansa felt badly for little Tommen Baratheon, he seemed to have no faults other than a kindness as unwavering as the North star. But he was no adventurer, no bold knight, nor did he shows signs towards becoming either.

Sansa herself wrote the letter, spoken to her deep in the godswood by her father in the lowest tones. At the end he kissed the top of her head and set about the task of caring for Ice, giving her leave to write her own short message to Prince Doran and, in all likelihood, Prince Oberyn. She stared long and hard at the words she's already written, how they made her complicit in this thing her parents plotted.

 _I would rather marry Prince Quentyn or Prince Trystane. Prince Quentyn for he is an anointed knight. Prince Trystane for he is akin to me in age. I understand though,_ here she paused, fighting to put into words what exactly she understood out of this whirlwind, _that the Crown must be wary of angering House Martell. King Robert would not fear angering Sunspear for using royal decree to break a betrothal to either of your sons, for neither of them are your heir. Your brother is not your heir but is a man grown with a reputation that has made its way into books while the man yet lives. He has already been injured by the Crown in the loss of his sister, to steal his wife would not bode well for the thief._

Sansa stared at what she'd written for a long while, knowing she would have to hide the letter and find another safe time to write it if she'd written something she didn't like or didn't make sense.

_I have barely seen more years of my own than you have between you as brothers, Prince Doran, I know this clearly. Prince Joffrey will be King one day, Prince Oberyn whiles away his days in Sunspear at your leisure. Queen or eternal Princess? Mother of another king or stepmother to eight bastards? The choice should be easy and clear but my parents' unease creates my own. If you'll go along with my lord father's plan, please know that I understand what it entails._

_Lady Sansa Stark_

There. Her part in the forgeries was done.

* * *

 

"--Please know that I understand what it entails, and her name signed in her own hand," Doran read aloud to his younger brother. Oberyn stood still for a long moment, his head bent in serious contemplation. Lord Stark had long ago made good on his word to send the bones of Lewyn and Elia in proper state to Sunspear, and had personally seen that both Rhaenys and Aegon had been interred among their Targaryen kin.

It appeared he also had a head for deception, and wanted better for his children than Baratheons and Lannisters. The War of the Usurper had broken the tentative ties between Dorne and the North--had Rhaegaer never stolen Lyanna, Honorable Ned might have married Lady Ashara Dayne. Those ties had never been revisited for good or ill--but now Honorable Ned had children of marrying age. A pair of marriages to the Houses wronged by House Stark wouldn't be suspicious.

"Does she?"

Doran did not answer his brother's question, for he well knew that she could not. Not in fullness.

"She's daughter to a Tully, I imagine she knows of duty in marriage, Oberyn. If," Doran set the letter aside, faintly impressed with the duplicity carried out by the Starks against Robert Baratheon, "if I accept these terms, you will not touch her until she understands what it means. Do you agree to all this?"

"And send her to wed a half-Lannister shit if I refuse? Plunge the Realm back into war just as new meat for the carrion birds has come of age? Brother, you know me better than such cruelty. Yes, yes, marry me off to the Stark girl," Oberyn said, raising his hands in surrender as he paced around the room.

"A letter to the Daynes wouldn't go amiss, too. Help me?" His hands had been terribly taxed by opening and reading the long letter that the Starks had sent. Oberyn glanced over and gave him a wan smile as he walked back to the desk they shared--one man on each side--and took up a quill. As bannermen to the Martells, the Daynes would have little say against the will of Sunspear and would be placated that they were not the only ones being given in marriage.

His brother would wed Sansa Stark, and they would continue on with their other plans.

"Doran," his brother said, not looking up from the slow scratch of his quill on parchment. He flicked his own gaze up from the Stark letter, wondering what little Sansa looked like, "young Viserys is mad. His sister is salvageable I think but--" he paused as he focused on a particular flourish.

"But should Arianne come to be queen our family shall know heartbreak once more," Doran finished in a sigh. His hands burned they hurt so. Too much to even move his arms now. Oberyn nodded, his brows quirked together like a boy at lessons. There was still something young in him, perhaps Lady Sansa wouldn't be too terribly disappointed in her betrothed.

Viserys was not a boy any longer--and they could not put a madman on the throne, or they'd be ruined as Tywin Lannister had never dreamed possible. Doran sighed, gingerly shifting in his chair. They would have to put Daenerys on the throne, and hope that Quentyn's sliver of Targaryen blood would be enough for those who wanted a man's claim above a woman's.

"Arianne will be pleased," Oberyn said, flicking Doran's name to the bottom of the letter. They shared a smile at that, and he wondered how much changed Westeros would be in a decade's time. For one thing the impossible would have happened and his brother would make a vow in a sept for the first time since he'd been a youth. Oberyn had cut his palms open the day Doran forbade him to take Dorne to war--he'd smeared his blood on the seven faces of god in the sept of Sunspear and cried out that he would have vengeance on the Lannisters before he entered it again.

"Indeed she shall. And, I think," he cautiously turned his hands over to examine them, "that we can convince the Tyrells to join us once we have the North to offer the Targaryens as well. Those two were the first willing Houses, and we ourselves were eventually willing too." Oberyn laughed then, rereading the letter he'd written before passing it to Doran to read with shaking hands.

"Three of the Seven, not bad for a dowry," Oberyn said, standing and resuming his pacing but slower than he had before.

"You forget, the Tullys of Riverrun might be swayed with two of six grandchildren married into Dorne. This is good, by the way," he said, raising the letter a little. Edric Dayne--the secret cousin of the Stark children--was yet a few years from his majority, but then again so was Arya Stark. She was an appropriate match for the Lord of Starfall, and Doran wondered for a moment how the Starks had worded 'Doran's' suggestion of the match. Perhaps little Sansa would tell them of 'their' letter once she arrived.

**Author's Note:**

> So for now this is just a one-shot because of reasons called 4AM.


End file.
